He put the book down and closed his eyes. His mind was full of intangible floating glow, like the ocean on a warm night, when every wave breaks into pale flame, and mysterious milky lights keep rising to the surface out of the dark waters and gleaming and vanishing. He became absorbed in the strange fluid harmonies that permeated his whole body, as a grey sky at nightfall suddenly becomes filled with endlessly changing patterns of light and color and shadow.
When he tried to seize hold of his thoughts, to give them definite musical expression in his mind, he found himself suddenly empty, the way a sandy inlet on the beach that has been full of shoals of silver fishes, becomes suddenly empty when a shadow crosses the water, and the man who is watching sees wanly his own reflection instead of the flickering of thousands of tiny silver bodies.
John Andrews awoke to feel a cold hand on his head.
“Feeling all right?” said a voice in his ear.
He found himself looking in a puffy, middle-aged face, with a lean nose and grey eyes, with dark rings under them. Andrews felt the eyes looking him over inquisitively. He saw the red triangle on the man's khaki sleeve.
“Yes,” he said.
“If you don't mind, I'd like to talk to you a little while, buddy.”
“Not a bit; have you got a chair?” said Andrews smiling.
“I don't suppose it was just right of me to wake you up, but you see it was this way.... You were the next in line, an' I was afraid I'd forget you, if I skipped you.”
“I understand,” said Andrews, with a sudden determination to take the initiative away from the “Y” man.